Written by Chris Simoni Monday, 08 June 2009 00:00

Who out there subscribes the any of the “Guitar Mags”? I used to get a ton of them, but recently I am letting all my subscriptions expire. I have always used the mags for decisions on gear purchases. Lately, I have found that these magazines are totally useless in that respect.  There is not one 100% honest review in any of them.

I have found that any magazine that is advertiser driven suffers from bogus gear reviews. How can all products can be 5 out of 5 stars? Surely, there has to be one turd? Not so, according to the magazines. Of course, since the advertiser pays to advertise their product in the magazine, they would not appreciate a review that was less than “Awesome”. The magazine editors would rather write a fluff review than to lose advertisers. Word of warning, don’t ever buy gear because it got a great review in a guitar rag.

What about the tabs? I have found that most of the tabs are aimed for the bedroom metal shredders and are not marketed to the gigging musician. I have no interest in playing the newest death metal. Who is going to dance to that stuff? Plus, how many copies of “Sweet Home Alabama, Stairway to Heaven”, and “You Shook Me All Night Long” does one person need? If you subscribe the any of the guitar mags, you will probably get one of these song tabs every other month. I have probably collected a dozen of each over the years, thanks to the guitar mags. To sum it up, I haven’t used a tab from a magazine in the last 8 years.

So you still want to subscribe to one? The only one that I would recommend is “Premier Guitar”. It contains no tabs, and actually has some great articles about tone, guitar setup and decent reviews. If you are looking for sound engineering/recording mag, the only one to read is “Sound on Sound” from Great Britain, the rest is garbage. Always take magazine reviews with a grain of salt, because the advertiser probably paid for the review to be positive.